New Squarespace Features: 10 New Squarespace Updates
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At times, Squarespace releases new features to help improve the site building experience for web designers and business owners alike.
As of November 2022, the platform has released some great new features that we at Launch Happy are making the most of. Now we want to share them with you. In this article we cover ten of the best new features available on Squarespace.
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1. Fluid Engine
This new feature is a HUGE change for Squarespace, making the platform way more powerful.
Fluid engine brings website developers a lot more design options that previously did not exist. Before, you had to write custom code (which is a ton of work) to achieve what you can now easily and quickly do natively with Squarespace’s new fluid engine.
When you go to the backend and hit “Add Section,” you’ll immediately see that the list of design options has grown significantly, giving you more power as you design your website pages and your content overall.
To access fluid engine, click “Upgrade” in the top corner. When you do this, you’ll see the screen change from the old block method to the new block method that enables you to easily click, drag, and drop something into the page.
To access fluid engine, you don’t have to upgrade your whole site or redesign everything. You can use fluid engine just for the specific sections of your site that you want to work on.
Fluid engine maximizes your ability to create a page exactly how you want it to be, while reducing your development time. It’s a win-win.
2. Duplicate Blocks
Using fluid engine, you can now highlight and duplicate multiple blocks, which is a huge time saver.
Before, you had to create each individual element. If you wanted three columns, you had to create and fine-tune three separate items, one at a time.
Now, you can create one, fine-tune it, and then easily duplicate it. This alone will drastically cut your design time.
3. Mobile Customization
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Some of your customers will access your site using a desktop, which has a larger screen. Many of your customers will access your site using a mobile device, which has a smaller screen.
Designing and optimizing for both used to be more complicated, but fluid engine provides you with fully customizable mobile settings.
You can now fully customize your mobile page view without upsetting anything on your desktop page view.
Your pages can have one look on desktops and a completely different look on mobile devices, giving you greater design flexibility.
4. Advanced Cookie Options
On. Squarespace, your site’s cookie options are now more advanced. Go to “Settings,” and then go to “Cookies and Visitor Data.” You’ll see that you have many options to work with.
Before, all you had was ON or OFF. Now, you can select any of the following:
Cookie banner type
Opt-in
Just accept
Opt-in and opt-out
And other possibilities
Particularly for people visiting your site from Europe, these options enable you to make your site a lot more user-friendly in terms of GDPR.
5. New Search Function
Squarespace has added a new search button at the top of the menu.
It works really well, enabling you to search the entire backend of your site (not the site content). Say you want to change the code in the code injection, but you don’t remember how to find it. Simply type “code injection” in the search bar, and it’ll show you where to locate it.
This is very useful for those things you may not access every day, such as custom CSS, the email campaign tool, and more. This feature is a nice, time-saving shortcut.
6. Cart & Language Switch
This is a small update, but if you do eCommerce, you’ll want to know about it.
In the editor, click on “Edit Site Header.” You’ll notice there are a few more options available to you. I want to highlight two.
The Cart: It used to be a standard icon you couldn’t change. Now you can add text so that the cart reflects how many items it holds.
Language Switch: This option lets users switch between different languages.
7. Marketing Page
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When you click on “Marketing” on the backend of Squarespace, you’ll see that the platform provides you with a lot of marketing tools you can use. All these tools are now conveniently listed in one place, on the marketing page.
In particular, take some time to review Squarespace’s email campaign tool, which is amazing, especially when you want to automate your campaigns.
8. Member Area Updates
The member area is useful for creating content that’s gated.
Go to “Settings” and click “Member Areas.” With this feature turned on, you enable subscription options.
Squarespace’s recent updates have added more advanced subscription options to this area. You’ll find options for:
Subscription payment plans
Payments repeating once, twice, monthly, weekly, annually, etc.
Fixed amount
Number of payments
Free subscription
And more
9. Scale Text Feature
When you double click into a section of text, you’ll see a new feature: the ability to pull on the corners of the text box to scale the text.
This new feature lets you scale the text to the size of the frame you want it to be. Play around with it by dragging the corners and moving them to see what happens.
The ability to scale text used to be complicated in Squarespace; now it’s super simple.
10. Video Block
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This is a huge update for Squarespace.
From the backend, click the plus sign, then drag a video block in.
Within the block, you’ll notice new features available to you, including:
Uploading a video directly to your site
Adding the same video to multiple pages
In the past, all you could do was add a link from YouTube or Vimeo. Now, you can upload a video directly to your Squarespace site, opening up new possibilities for you.
Need More Help?
If you want to learn how to use any of these new features, or you’d like to learn about other ways to simplify your life as a website developer, consider purchasing one of our helpful products designed to demystify Squarespace.
You can also make use of our free resources, including our helpful guides and our monthly newsletter.
